Harlan Johnson - Festoon

Galerie Trois Points 9 September -
7 October 2000

Festoon, an exhibition of Harlan
Johnson's recent paintings was held at Galerie Trois Points
in Montéal in the autumn of 2000. The gallery is located on the
fifth floor of the Belgo building above Sainte-Catherine Street.
Thus to visit the exhibition one had to traverse an active retail
thoroughfare with its advertising panels and shop windows of
electronic displays. Approaching the building that houses the
gallery, one walked by a plethora of digitally reproduced
imagery, through a visual environment of multiple copies. Walter
Benjamin's effect of technological reproduction always comes to
mind in these vibrant commercial settings, where the aura of any
original idea has been watered down through endless processes of
duplication.

The role of the artist as painter in our
age of digital reproduction is uncertain. There is an ideological
as well as commercial desire for the painter to return the aura
to the artwork, to produce, in the rarefied air of the artist's
studio, original meaningful imagery detached from the metropolis
of meaningless signs that surround us. Fortunately, Harlan
Johnson subverts this desire by insisting on making work that
refers to and uses this complex interplay of technologically
reproduced signs that form our visual environment.

Festoon, is made up of a selection
of square canvases varying in size from 24 to 71 centimetres
across. These works are hung in clusters of three or four
respecting an invisible grid on the four walls of the gallery.
Johnson, not insignificantly, chooses as his imagery the repeated
floral patterns found on domestic textiles. The earliest
processes of multiple image reproduction were in textile design;
industrial looms developed early in the 19th century
could be programmed to reproduce an infinite series of identical
motifs and colours. The technological precursors for digital
image reproduction are to be found in mechanised weaving
processes of the Industrial Revolution.

At first look, Johnson's paintings appear
to be composed of colourful flower and leaf patterns stencilled
in thick paint over chromatically contrasting painted surfaces.
Upon closer inspection, we see that these `surfaces' are mostly
made up of found fabrics, of patterned velour, curtain lace and
satin. We also see that these paintings are composed of a
multiplicity of interconnected layers. The bottom layer is the
aforementioned fabric. The printed and embroidered patterns are
visible in the interstices of a series of painted marks applied
to them. Johnson has projected onto his found materials fragments
of patterns from other found fabrics. He has painted in by hand
enlarged details of these designs, the expanded scale distorting
and altering the predominantly floral motifs giving them the
abstract pixelated quality of digital imagery.

Several of Johnson's pictures use a
diaphanous nylon weave as a support allowing the paint to float
above the translucent mesh. In Palimpsest 10 the stretcher
is visible through the translucent fabric, adding one more layer
to Johnson's complex play of surfaces. A floral patterned lace
curtain, another covering of transparent textured relief, is
glued to this surface. Onto this second layer, Johnson has
painted fragments of a floral motif, blown up to become a
distorted checkerboard of white and blue pixels.

The overall effect of looking at one of
Johnson's recent paintings is to find oneself peering into a
profundity of overlapping patterns, layers upon layers that
alternately rise to the surface and recede into the depths. Some
marks rest on the uppermost crust of the painting's surface while
others blend in with the patterns of the supporting fabrics. At
times these blended marks take the form of a recognisable floral
or leaf motif, at other times they are indistinct imprints,
stains like those found on old patterned furniture.

The underlying structure of many of
Johnson's paintings resembles a web or a network of filaments and
patterns. With Festoon 2 he has used a monochromatic red
satin with a raised floral pattern as his canvas. Johnson has
applied orange paint to some of the negative spaces in the
pattern to bring out the textured flowers. Over this he has
painted, in an earthier tone of red, a trellis, a fragment of
another borrowed pattern, crawling up the right side of the
canvas. On top of this floats an almost menacing black floral
form, a tightly knit pattern reminiscent of a spider's web.

With Guise 6, in an ironic take on
Jasper John's
art-as-object approach, Johnson has
glued a pair of men's underpants to a square canvas. A floral
pattern covers the pants and continues onto the canvas. It is as
if the canvas and the underwear have been stained through a batik
or tie-dye process. The saturated colours and the bold pattern
partially camouflage the underclothing. Colour and decoration
predominate, blending the clothing into a matrix of floral forms.

Johnson's patterns are the ubiquitous
floral designs of contemporary popular home decor. If there is a
nostalgic quality to the colour and form of Johnson's imagery it
is because the source, and indeed elements, of his current
paintings are discarded fabrics and old textile samples that he
has collected. Fragments of past domestic interiors are recalled;
we remember our grandmother's house and family rooms in old films
and television shows.

As well as our personal associations with
this imagery, an historical design ideology is also evoked. The
floral and natural motifs seen in Johnson's paintings and so
prevalent in late-Victorian interiors can be traced to the
influence of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement of
19th century Britain.

William Morris preached a return to
simplicity and practicality in architecture and design. He
promoted, through his workshop, a return to traditional crafts
and techniques of weaving, dying and printing. He sought to reverse the
dehumanising effects of the Industrial Revolution and proposed a
society in which people could enjoy craftsmanship and simplicity
of expression. Morris insisted that art
and design should look first to nature for inspiration; floral
patterns and leaf motifs prevailed in his wallpaper and textile
design.

Arts and Crafts inspired patterns have to
this day infiltrated many popular domestic interiors. Ironically,
the ubiquitous floral motif wallpaper and curtains are mass
produced derivatives of Morris' original patterns. The
superficial effect of the Arts and Crafts movement is still very
much among us but the substance of Morris' agenda, his desire to
return to a more egalitarian and traditional way of making things
has become redundant in a world of globalised mass production.

Harlan Johnson's testament to the failed
Arts and Crafts ideal is a body of work that re-interprets
re-interpreted natural motifs and celebrates, through Johnson's
expertise with paint and brush, individual craftsmanship. And,
while the paintings in Festoon may refer to centuries old
ideals of beauty and craftsmanship, they at the same time address
topical issues. The pixelated imagery, as well as the mass
produced found elements, in this body of work speaks to the
prevalence of visual stimuli in our culture. As we enter into
Johnson's recent paintings we cannot escape the visual references
to the web of mass-produced imagery, the forest of visual
signifiers, which surround us in the digital age.